Any Drug Bill better than none

As Congress reconvenes this week, conservatives are pushing a scenario that makes the best of inevitable prescription drug subsidies: The Senate-House conference would retain the House bill's market elements. That would collapse the Senate's big bipartisan majority, perhaps producing a 50-50 tie to be broken by Vice President Dick Cheney. There might be, however, a surprising obstacle: George W. Bush.

The White House has made clear the president will sign any prescription drug bill arriving from Capitol Hill. Bush thereby has removed himself as a player in an epochal battle over this country's health care, undermining the optimistic scenario. No realistic conservative can devise a way to kill this bill. The question is whether Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's inexorable march toward a government-controlled health care system can be slowed.

The president does not seem at all interested in this effort. Indeed, on no issue has he been so separated from his conservative support base. He did not please supporters when he collaborated with Kennedy on the 2001 school bill or said he would sign any campaign finance reform bill in 2002. But Bush's passivity on prescription drugs, abandoning his own stated intentions, casts a longer shadow on national policy. Republicans do not want to criticize their president as the election campaign nears, but they are heartsick.

Two battles were lost from the start. First, a massive new entitlement of prescription drugs for seniors will be established, with its real cost around $1 trillion over 10 years. Second, Medicare--which approximates a national system of socialized medicine--will not be reformed comprehensively as part of a prescription drug subsidy (as hoped for by nearly all Republicans, Bush included).

Unlike the Kennedy-blessed Senate bill, the House measure does provide a vestige of Medicare reform: a workable market-based option for providing prescription drugs. In the Senate, Kennedy made sure the private sector was effectively excluded.

A second saving feature of the House bill typifies the legislative creativity of House Republicans, a missing factor in the Senate and the administration. Majority Whip Roy Blunt's office worried that the prescription drug bill would not pick up enough conservative support to pass. To improve the product, the old, limited Medical Savings Accounts, under which individuals would establish tax-exempt nest eggs for emergencies, were dressed up and rolled out.

A separate bill changes the name to Health Savings Accounts and broadens the coverage. This bill passed June 26, before the prescription drugs measure was brought up. It was fiercely opposed by Democrats, who have always been antagonistic to private accounts.

But opponents may have been asleep at the switch earlier that day when Rep. Deborah Pryce, Republican Conference chairwoman, told the House that after both bills were passed, the two separate bills should become one. Oddly, no Democrat protested. The Health Savings Accounts bill would have tough going in the Senate. Folded into prescription drugs, it now enters a Senate-House conference. The question is will this market-oriented proposal survive that conference.

On the day after the Senate passed the Kennedy-approved bill, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow went to the floor to state the liberal position. Stabenow, who relentlessly promotes government health care, declared her vote for the bill was ''one of the toughest'' since her election from Michigan in 2000. If the House bill ended up as the final product, she promised, ''I will vote no.''

In short, Debbie Stabenow's support is based on killing the House's market elements, but the White House gives the impression the president does not care if they die. That would not be the case if he listens to Medicare Administrator Thomas Scully, who understands the stakes for American health care. The correct perception on Capitol Hill is that the president's political team wants to get this over with, sign any bill, and damn the consequences.

Remember Clinton only sold out his base three times in 8 years. On NAFTA, Freedom to Farm, and Welfare Reform, Welfare Reform he vetoed twice and got a bill more to his liking.

Bush has sold out conservatives on CFR, extension of Feinstein Schumer, Govt Spending, Farm Bill, Education Bill, Illegal Immigration, etc. in only 2 1/2 years. Now he wants to do it on the biggest entitlement in 40 years.

It is time to start telling POTUS we will not support you if you are going to act like a Democrat, this was his fathers mistake and he is making the same one just not on taxes.

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It is in the breaking news sidebar!

You can't talk about my shrub like that on I love bush.com. they will think you are a DUer or something, like that.

I swear the shrubitte kool aid drinkers are more of a pain in the butt than the klinton kool aid drinkers.

No modern politician understands the dictum, "I want to be left alone."

We would have been sssSSSOOOooo much better of with SoreLoserman. </sarcasm>

My point is Bush is not selling Conservatism, he is selling whatever you send me with a name the public likes on it bill and I'll sign it no matter what it means for the future.

Bush said he wanted strict constructionist judges, but he won't recess appoint Estrada, Pickering, or lady from TEXAS . How many Constructionist has he actually appointed?

The sodomy ruling involved Texas Law and he said nothing. Doesn't now support Constitutional Amendment regarding Marriage, and said SCOTUS rediculous Racial Preferences Ruling was good.

IS THIS WHAT YOU EXPECTED WHEN YOU VOTED FOR BUSH, we should be much better off than we are, the DemRATS for all their bitching are getting there agenda passed.

The sodomy ruling involved Texas Law and he said nothing.

Bush ain't on the Supreme Court. His opinion on their decisions carries the same weight as yours or mine.

I learned a long time ago, you don't pay attention to what people say, you pay attention to what they do.

I think Bush is playing rope-a-dope with the Dims. My litmus test is the AWB renewal.

If the AWB sunsets, then Bush got me what I wanted. He can say anything he wants, as long as the final result is what I want.

But then there are the people who are addicted to losing who want Bush to "take a principled stand."

What they mean is, they don't care about the result, they just want Bush to mouth words they want to hear like their Mommies used to.

EPluribusUnum: I think Bush is playing rope-a-dope with the Dims. My litmus test is the AWB renewal. If the AWB sunsets, then Bush got me what I wanted. He can say anything he wants, as long as the final result is what I want.

So, Bush playing games with someone else just to get their votes, but then acting in an opposite way, is fine with you as long he acts finally the way you want him to. So shall we play the world's smallest violin for you when he plays rope-a-dope with your mind until you think he is supporting you and then acts in an opposite way to get someone else's vote? Or has that happened already and you just haven't noticed yet? Can you say, "nation building," boys and girls?
--Raoul

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told Knight-Ridder newspapers that the president "supports the current law, and he supports reauthorization of the current law."

You didn't read what I said, did you?

I said that I don't care what Bush says, I care what happens.

A spokesman said something to defuse the entire issue, and because of that the AWB is no longer on the radar screen.

If it stays that way, it will sunset.

But cavemen like you don't care about winning an issue.

You want Bush to make pious pronouncements about Freedom, The Second Amendment, Patrick Henry and Armed Rebellion so you can feel good and we can lose.

I also said AWB is my litmus test.

If AWB is renewed under Bush, I am through with him.

If it is sunsetted, he did his job.

But I am sure that will not be good enough for people like you, who are addidcted to losing because they can't keep their big mouths shut.

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